By Elizabeth Salthouse

His story was so incredible that even his wife didn't believe it. And if it hadn't been for a group of Hungarian women, no-one would ever have known. But the truth is that Giorgio Perlasca from Como in northern Italy, saved four times more Jews from the Nazi gas chambers than his more famous counterpart Oskar Schindler, rescuing at least 5500 souls over the course of just 45 days during the winter of 1944. As we approach International Holocaust Day on January 27th, let's take a look at this modest Italian man's life and how he managed to hoodwink the Germans.

Perlasca's early life
Giorgio Perlasca's early life showed absolutely no inkling of what was to come; if anything it suggested the total opposite. Born in 1910 into a family of civil servants, judges and army officers from Como, the young Perlasca grew up in Maserà near Padua. In his teens the youngster discovered the poet, nationalist and World War I hero Gabriele D'Annunzio who is often seen as the originator of the Italian fascist ideals that Benito Mussolini would adopt. And Perlasca quickly became a supporter of D'Annunzio, Fascism and Mussolini even putting his life on the line for the cause.

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Fonte: L'italo-Americano